Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the intra-limb coordination during treadmill walking performed by
persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and healthy adults. Twelve healthy adults (male = 5, female = 7) and
twelve age and gender matched MS patients (male = 5, female = 7) were selected non-randomly. All
participants walked on a treadmill for 20 strides on two occasions. The mean absolute relative phase was used to
compare 4 stages of the gait cycle (heel contact, mid stance, toe off, and mid swing) between the two groups.
Dependent variables were relative phase and angular position in the knee and ankle joints. Hotelling’s T2 test
and Cross-correlation coefficient were used to analysis the multiple sets of data. The shape of angle-angle plot
showed significant between-group differences in the patterns of gait (T2 = 35.02, F = 35.02, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.97).
Analysis of variance results showed that there were significant differences between the relative phase of the two
groups on heel contact (F = 13.09, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.65) and mid stance (F = 15.12, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.68) stages.
Cross-correlation function results showed that in the healthy group, there were no significant relationships
between the angular positions of two joints in the different stages, whereas in the MS group there was a
significant inverse relationship (CCF = -0.45, p < 0.05) between the angular positions of two joints. In
conclusion, the results of this study showed that in people with MS, intra-limb coordination patterns during
walking are different from healthy people in terms of spatiotemporal features because of structural and
functional changes due to the disease.

Item Type:

Article

Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018: